“Her Glory Is Not Dominion, But Liberty”

This project has had many failures, most often when we forget that the freedom of a nation must always grow from its own historical roots. We cannot simply wage a war that rips up those roots and then transplant shoots from our own stock (American-style capitalism, political parties, our popular culture). We have also often forgotten that the liberation of our own citizens is by no means complete. But none of this alters the fact that our governments have often worked and our soldiers died not just for our own freedom but for the freedom of all nations.

We are a MacIntyrean community that is still trying to live out a modern morality that seeks the freedom of everyone. I love America because I still believe that this sublime project is possible.

MacIntyre would likely be surprised to hear that a “MacIntyrean community” has such universalist goals. Most American soldiers have fought and died in our wars because they wished to defend and serve their country (i.e., because of their patriotism), and these wars have sometimes resulted in the liberation of other nations, but that has rarely ever been the reason for those wars or the sacrifices that American soldiers have made. Inasmuch as Americans have fought and died for the freedom of other nations, it has not been and could not have been for the “freedom of all nations.” I suspect that Gutting loves America and he believes this project of universal liberation is possible, but I doubt that he loves America because he believes the project is possible.

Seeking “the freedom of everyone” contradicts some of our oldest national traditions. Everyone remembers the part of John Quincy Adams’ July 4 speech that says that America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, but the section that follows is even more important:

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power.

Then towards the end of the speech, Adams said:

Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace.

What Gutting proposes eventually requires that we ignore the last of those three words, and along the way we will convince ourselves once again that our aggressive wars can be justified in the name of freedom. If the project Gutting refers to has had “many failures,” that should be a warning that the project’s goal is one that no nation is capable of achieving.

P.S. To answer Gutting’s question, “the animating ideal of American patriotism” is the liberty of Americans along with the security of the United States. I don’t see how it could be anything else without ceasing to be connected to American patriotism.

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11 Responses to “Her Glory Is Not Dominion, But Liberty”

Franklin, Adams, Washington, Jefferson. Each said more or less the same thing at one time or another. The “freedom of everyone” is a freedom that others must achieve for themselves if it is to have any worth. The kind of freedom secured for others by American force is often merely sufficient freedom to stimulate the global profits of the parasites and predators that follow – at some safe distance – in the wake of our legions.

Happy 4th of July to all of you at the American Conservative. Keep tending the flame.

You put your finger on one strain of American patriotism that’s a kinda disturbing. Foreigners and tons of people here love their country for many of the reasons we love our family, ie, they ARE our family, we grew up with them, we know them, we form a little community that helps define all of us as individuals. But there’s another strain that seem to premise loving our country as only possible if it’s dominant, #1, pre-eminent over all the rest, able to dictate or to conquer. It goes beyond simple pride into love for the sake of power and dominance, loving the strong or even the bully not for any other quality but that he IS strong or is a bully. That doesn’t deserve to be celebrated on the 4th or on any other day, and JQA was prescient in warning against it.

Of course we don’t know what Washington, Adams, Franklin etc. would have said if 1) they had lived through the Holocaust OR 2) they saw America become a superpower so dominant in the world it made the England of their era seem small by comparison. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, y’all.

“How can there be peace really when there are monsters still… read despots and authoritarian regimes?

Monsters don’t always stay in their box.”

I think the point is that this is not really our business, unless they try to get in our box. The results of our well-meaning interventions have more often been disastrous than fruitful (even when it was not obvious at the time).

There will always be despots. And universal peace will always be elusive. But, on balance, can we say that our military interventions have contributed to peace, or to conflict, for the past 60 years?

Anyone who has ever actually read MacIntyre knows that he despises the whole project of the modern nation-state, denouncing it, inter alia, as a dangerous and unmanageable institution that is based on lies and never accomplishes what it claims for its purpose. Instead, it ends up asking you to die for it, which MacIntyre memorably says is the equivalent of being asked to die for the telephone company. A universalist he is not.